According to the Greek mythology, Kairos was the god for the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment) that allowed humans exceed the limits of their fate.

The Greeks had two words to refer to time: chronos and kairos. The first one refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens.

Chronos was a quantitative measure while Kairos had qualitative nature.

As it can be seen on the image of Kairos, the god of opportunities was bald on the back of his head. This meant that opportunities could only be taken when they were coming. When they were going there was no way to grasp them.

That is why an apportunity can only be seized if one’s mind is prepared and the person is able to see it before it passes. Opportunities are such because they change the fate of people.

The Chinese Perspective

Chinese philosophy considers that any crisis is integrated by a threat and an opportunity.

The question we want to explore is: why can not people see the opportunities Kairos brings about?

Our hypothesis is that the Chinese are right; the opportunities always come together with a threat, and unfortunately most of the people see the threat of the opportunity and cannot see the chance that is being opened.

When fear prevails, people need to wait until the threat passes before trying to grasp the opportunity. But, paradoxically, then they cannot grasp it because the head is bald and the opportunity has been lost.

By integrating both aspects we can see that only those whose minds are prepared and have the courage to manage the threat that is implicit in any opportunity are able to grasp the hair of Kairos when he is coming.

Peter Belohlavek – Diana Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. http://www.unicist.org

One thought on “Take opportunities using Greek + Chinese philosophy”

Thank you for your thoughts and introspective into opportunities, threats and the the element of fear.
I agree with you on the fact that, to be truly evolutive, one must overcome fear, and to do so, it is necessary to systematically comprehend reality, the interconection of things, and most importantly, acknowledge yourself as an active change agent.